BRANTFORD, Ont. - Human bones of a former student have been found on the site of one of Canada's oldest residential schools in a shallow grave, the Mohawk Nation has claimed.

But, in a release, the group said it won't allow outside police or government officials to confirm the find "because of their complicity in this crime."

The former Mohawk Institute in this southern Ontario city closed in 1970.

It now operates as the Woodland Cultural Centre.

It was one of dozens of residential schools across Canada attended by tens of thousands of native children forcibly removed from their homes.

The last one closed in 1996.

The remains, found in less than a metre of soil in an area former residents of the school said was used as a cemetery, consist of what is described as a series of 16 bones.

Parts of a video posted to YouTube by the native group show what's believed to be a portion of a child's humerus or tibia, which are bones of the arm.

The press release refers to other bones potentially being vertebrae from an adolescent.

The Mohawk Nation said buttons and other items from clothing matching student uniforms were also found in the same area.

Some of the bones were sent away for forensic and DNA analysis to confirm the findings of an unnamed consulting archeologist, who determined them to be human, the native group said.

Kevin Annett, a former United Church minister calling for further accountability by governments and churches who ran residential schools, was invited by some elders of the Mohawk Nation to the site. He said the depth at which the remains were found does cast some doubt as to whether they might belong to former students or could have found there way there at a different time.

"This can be a difficult thing to face when it's in your own backyard. you need to neutrally look at the situation," Annett said in a phone interview Tuesday. "The fact of the bones puts this into a different light."

He said the Mohawk Nation continues to look into the archives of the former school to find out more about the area where the bones were found, and has asked international observers to further confirm the findings.

"There are a number of groups in the U.S. And Europe where the offer to help is being made," Annett said. "There a group with experience (in burial sites) in Bosnia who've offered to come in and help."